President Donald Trump recently dodged a Jeffrey Epstein question by attacking former President Barack Obama, accusing him of treason. His latest attempt to deflect suggests Obama still lives rent-free in his head, which made me tilt mine.
Trump: “And except for the fact that he gets shielded by the press for his entire life, that’s the one they — look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question. You know, I like to say, ‘Let’s give it time. It’s there. He’s guilty.’ They — this was treason, this was every word you can think of.”
Treason is the attempt to overthrow the government and is punishable by death in the United States. It’s an unprecedented accusation.
It’s also unfounded and not true. But do you know what is? This Guardian headline: “Trump cranks up distraction machine but focus refuses to budge from Epstein.”
When did Obama allegedly commit this “treasonous” behavior? According to recently released documents (i.e. emails) from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, she believes members of the Obama administration influenced intelligence and conspired to compromise the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
That’s not true. But do you know what is? This Wall Street Journal headline: “Donald Trump’s name reported to feature in DoJ files about Jeffrey Epstein.”
It’s the same year Obama graciously hosted Trump in the Oval Office. But Trump recently turned this act of hospitality into one of hostility, posting an AI-generated video (from this meeting) of former President Obama being arrested in the Oval Office, forcibly detained by the FBI, and then pacing inside a jail cell on social media. Still, only one of these presidents was convicted on 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers.
Obama’s office issued a statement in response: “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
Obama called it a “weak attempt at distraction.” Less we forget, Trump started it by demanding Obama produce his birth certificate, fanning the flames of the “birther” movement in 2011. Obama responded with humor at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Newsweek recently reported:
“That weekend, President Barack Obama authorized the mission to kill Osama bin Laden and kept it secret from the world as he delivered a cutting speech that brought down the house at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. … At that moment, one of the biggest stories in the American media was the “birtherism” conspiracy theory being fanned by Trump, at that point a reality TV host employed by NBC who was going on television wherever he could to float a baseless story that Obama was, perhaps, not born in the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president.”
But he was. And it is as Ta-Nehisi Coates says in We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy: “In short, Obama, his family, and his administration were a walking advertisement for the ease with which black people could be fully integrated into the unthreatening mainstream of American culture, politics and myth. And that was always the problem. … But in the collective sense, what this country fears is black respectability, Good Negro Government.”
For Trump, it is Obama’s humor, intelligence, poise, grace under fire, eloquence, and global stature that keeps him up at night. Obama is everything Trump is not. He’ll never measure up and he knows it.
Distinguished fellow and former director at Chatham House Robin Niblett said in an Early Start MSN interview about Trump’s state of mind, “Well, I think the president’s state of mind remains constant, which is if you’re attacked, you attack stronger in return. And you deflect.”
Niblett continued, “He’s always wanted to have an element of retribution in his new domestic policy agenda. He’s gone after the Biden family, gone obviously after members of the Biden administration as well as people who he feels betrayed him in his first term. So, I don’t think it surprises me.”
Still, he keeps circling back to Obama. But to Trump’s surprise, it’s incredibly irrelevant and not the answer his base is looking for. Release the Epstein files.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
